Tag Archives: summer

Scotland’s hugely anticipated garden festival – Gardening Scotland – will once again open its doors to the public at the Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh, from 2nd-4th June 2017.
Welcoming more than 35,000 people, the three-day event is a celebration of all things related to the great outdoors, attracting novice and expert gardeners, foodies, nature lovers and families looking for a fun and action-packed day out.

My cut flower patch has well and truly gone to seed. It has dried up, shriveled and in an unexpected way, it’s looking fantastic. Intricate golden seed heads glisten in the late summer sun and rustle in the breeze.
I grew three kinds of love-in-a-mist, which looked wonderful earlier in the summer and provided me with armfuls of cut flowers to give to friends. The real stars of the show, though, …Read More

Pollen is amazing stuff, and it’s everywhere in spring and summer months. Its individual grains are infinitely variable and beautiful when you look at them under a microscope, with forms varying from simple footballs to prickly alien spaceships.
However, try telling that to someone who’s who has spent the first sunny day of …Read More

Not a great start of summer – where are those lovely balmy days? I am told they are on the way and I think that today could be one of them, the sun’s shining and there’s a lovely warm breeze. Such a wonderful time of the year to spend outdoors in the garden – all the plants are trying to upstage each other with their variety of colours. I have …Read More

Mosquitoes are horrible things! They may be a yummy treat for birds and bats, but personally I don’t want them hanging around my garden. Neither do I want to smell of those stinky spray-on replants!
It turns out that mosquitoes, along with many biting insects, are attracted to certain odors in human skin. There are several plants with strong scents that we find pleasant, which you can use to help mask …Read More

Midsummer’s day came and went, much like England’s world cup dreams. For me the sadness of shortening days is tempered by the joy of much less chat about football. Now we’re in high summer; it’s all about the long drowsy days of Wimbledon (much more civilised) and – even better – most of the season’s hard work is done on the allotment. There’s lots to pick – everything’s growing apace …Read More

Following on from last week’s guide to mollusc-bashing, here are some more ways to banish slugs from your garden.
The War on Slugs has three fronts. The chemical (poisoning with pellets), the physical (barriers and traps) and biological (employing slug-eating animals).
This week it’s the turn of the physical. Physical barrier methods rely on making the surfaces around the plant difficult or unpleasant for the slug to cross. Based on personal experience …Read More

Slugs, the one thing all gardeners can agree on. The bêtes noires of borders from Brighton to Birmingham? Right? Well, no, actually…
Here in the UK we have around 30 native species of slug, of which only four are pests. Who’d have thought these slimy critters came in so much variety? Some such as the almost-pretty leopard slug don’t eat live plants at all, instead preferring to eat other slugs and …Read More

“Oh so you’ve done the Chelsea Chop have you?” – accompanied by a knowing nod of approval and a slight air of smugness. It’s one of those gardening rites of passage, a little piece of jargon that makes those in the know feel just a little wiser than the rest.
It’s nothing to do with illicit substances or even anything vaguely highfalutin’ – merely a seasonal shearing of some of May’s …Read More

Herbs are the icing on the gardener’s cake. They’re that ‘little extra something’ that you don’t really need, but yet… they’re one of the types of plant that almost everyone tries to grow. After all, what would roast lamb be without mint sauce made from leaves that were growing in the garden not two hours ago? What would roast pork be without sage and onion lending their subtle depths of …Read More